Kazakhstan’s president is worried the final syllable of the country’s name is scaring off tourists and investors; Edward Snowden was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian lawmakers who may have felt slighted by Obama’s choice of ambassador to Oslo; and now there is an app for Google Glass that will identify you at a glance. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Physicists have found evidence in simulations that the universe is quite possibly a projection; the latest Edward Snowden leak reveals the NSA uses Google cookies when determining whom to hack; meanwhile, the National Library of Norway is digitizing all of its books and making them free to read online. These discoveries and more after the jump.

More and more it seems that “don’t go far” is the message the U.S. government is sending Americans. The global travel alert issued Aug. 2 is a perfect example of how the State Department uses fear to keep people “safely” at home, and ignorant.

Anders Behring Breivik, “the Norwegian far-right extremist” who killed 77 people and wounded hundreds during twin attacks in Norway last summer, was Friday declared to have been sane throughout the course of his rampage. A court sentenced him to at least 21 years in prison.

If you’re going to commit a jailable offense, do it in Norway, where officials at the high-security Halden prison believe that providing inmates with a “light and positive” environment will make them better people when they re-enter society.

For proving that love for others, regardless of creed, gender or skin color, is still a powerful force in human affairs, we honor the 40,000 Norwegians who sang out in an Oslo square on Thursday against the violent dogma of mass killer Anders Breivik. They are our Truthdiggers of the Week.

Early in the 20th century, Ayn Rand admired serial killer William Hickman from afar. Today, 23-year-old Massachusetts resident Kevin Forts has found his own murderous darling in the figure of accused terrorist Anders Breivik.

It’s one of the most widely recognized images in art, and now one of four versions of Edvard Munch’s archetypal image of modern angst is going on the block at Sotheby’s New York auction house with an expected selling price of $80 million or more.

This may not come as particularly surprising news, but psychiatry experts tasked with examining Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who killed 77 people and injured 151 in a mass shooting in his home country last summer, have concluded that he is insane.

Unusual weather ripped a sizable hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic last winter, exposing people in northern Russia, parts of Greenland and Norway to high levels of UV radiation. Human activity did not cause the hole’s sudden appearance, scientists said in a report released Monday. (more)

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, leader of the Labor Party whose youth activists were so viciously targeted by right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik, is warning against “a witch hunt on expression.” At the same time, the right-wing Progress Party is looking to exploit Breivik’s mass murder to revise a few civil liberties.

On Tuesday, in a column that can be read here, Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges criticized Sam Harris (above) as being a fundamentalist. We offered Harris, who was once a prominent contributor to this site, a chance to respond, and he has done so.

The monster who slaughtered at least 76 innocent victims in Norway was animated by the same blend of paranoia, xenophobia and alienation that fuels anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. Yes, it could happen here.

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian man who killed a combined 76 people in the heart of Oslo and on the island of Utoeya last week, told a judge Monday that “two more cells” belonging to his supposed terrorist organization are at large. (more)

Norwegian police charged a man Saturday whom they describe as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist in connection with a deadly bombing in Oslo and shooting spree at a summer camp for liberal youth that killed at least 92 people.

There are three kinds of studies we hear about. (1) Something incredibly obvious turns out to be true. (2) Something you like is good for you. (3) Something you like is bad for you. Obviously we prefer No. 2s, like this study out of Norway that says drinking wine—especially if you’re a woman—might make you smarter.

What is a sleepy Scandinavian country doing in al-Qaida’s cross hairs? That’s the question many Norwegians are asking themselves after three people were arrested on charges of planning to attack the country.

The international community has totally failed to convince Japan, Iceland and Norway to stop hunting whales, including those facing extinction. A new proposal would allow the rogue nations to drop the pretense of scientific research in exchange for a reduction in kills, but environmentalists are skeptical.

Portugal is likely to become the sixth European nation—after Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands—to legalize gay marriage. The Portuguese government has proposed to change the country’s official definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.

A Norwegian company thinks it can squeeze enough electricity out of the natural phenomenon of osmosis to power China. Right now the company’s plant can barely heat a tea kettle, but officials hope to power a village in a few years, and a lot more after that.

It looks like a pact to ban current cluster bomb designs will take another step forward, with more than 100 countries slated to sign the treaty in the next couple of days. However, the U.S., Russia and China—the largest cluster bomb manufacturers—so far have refused to sign on.

An appeals court in Norway ruled in favor of the owners of a go-go bar in Oslo who had refused to pay taxes on entry fees on the grounds that striptease dancers are stage artists like sword swallowers and comedians and deserve the same status. According to the BBC report, the court ruled that “[s]triptease, in the way it is practised in this case, is a form of dance combined with acting” and should be exempt from the value-added tax.

Norway is starting construction on a massive subterranean complex on the Arctic island of Svalbard to store seeds of all known crops in the world. More than 100 countries have signed on to the project, which is designed to reestablish plants in the wake of an apocalyptic manmade or natural attack. Norway’s Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen called the vault a “Noah’s Ark on Svalbard.”